Werner's Nomenclature of Colours:...

About the Book

First published in 1814, Werner's Nomenclature of Colours is a taxonomic guide to the colors of the natural world that has been cherished by artists and scientists for more than two centuries. This new edition brings the classic work back to life.In the late eighteenth century, mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner devised a standardized color scheme that allowed him to describe even the subtlest of chromatic differences with consistent terminology. His scheme was then adapted by an Edinburgh flower painter, Patrick Syme, who used the actual minerals described by Werner to create the color charts in the book, enhancing them with examples from flora and fauna.In the pre-photographic age, almost all visual details had to be captured via the written word, and scientific observers could not afford ambiguity in their descriptions.